Apr 4, 2015: Kolkata and Delhi are inclined towards a price rise as compared to Hyderabad, which is more inclined towards a price decrease. Perception of home prices being high is maximum in Mumbai and Pune. In Kolkata and Hyderabad, more perceive prices to be reasonable, claims a recent survey by private sector. Such announcement favours the builders and developers to increase prices and manipulate.

The Govt initiated `NHB Residex’, the index which is expected to fill the void created by an absence of a relevant benchmark in the booming housing market in India. It promises to capture relationship between the residential property prices and the various backward and forward linkages it has in the economy. Let’s hope investors get return for every buck.

It compiles the indices for 10 major cities – Greater Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Banagalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Jaipur and Patna. Useful for individual buyers, builders, housing finance industry as well as Government and policy-makers.

Buyers and builders can benefit by interpreting the indices to get an idea regarding demand and price movements of different types of houses in various cities and localities. Also the housing finance industry can use the indices to assess the likely demand for finance.

Until now, very little information is available to the home buyers and investors through local real estate agents and investment advisors, who have limited resources and may not be considered to be independent or objective in their opinions. With the persistent boom of the housing sector,there was surely a need to monitor the movement of value of the underlying assets (i.e. the real estate) and ensure that there are no undue mark-ups on either side of the economically efficient pricing. In fact, there is a need for reliable, unbiased information about the long-term performance of residential property specifically in terms of its pricing and their movements over time.

HPI-Market Prices
(Real Estate Price Table, Source: National Housing Bank)